Re: [newbie] Software Patents

[John Richard Smith]

HaywireMac wrote:

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 13:20:34 +0000
John Richard Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> uttered:
 

So does this leave us with a satisfactory position ?
I'm not at all sure.
   

Of course not. It won't be satisfactory until all Political interference
in the affairs of software and the internet is strictly forbidden. The
internet is the last chance we have at a truly free market of ideas, as
Adam Smith envisioned it, and has been so extensively corrupted by
government protected monopolies like MS, the RIAA, and the MPAA.
 

I'm curious as to why Europeans are not trying to get the principle of

the GPL incorporated into European law. Wouldn't this be better than 
hedging around trying to determin what is patentable and what it not.
   

Absolutely. This should be the focus *everywhere*, so that we can prove
William Gibson wrong, 

William Gibson
   
       <person> Author of cyberpunk novels such as Neuromancer
       (1984), Count Zero (1986), Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Virtual
       Light (1993).
   
       Neuromancer, a novel about a computer hacker/criminal
       "cowboy" of the future helping to free an artificial
       intelligence from its programmed bounds, won the Hugo and
       Nebula science fiction awards and is credited as the seminal
       cyberpunk novel and the origin of the term "cyberspace".
   
       Gibson does not have a technical background and supposedly
       purchased his first computer in 1992.
   
       (1996-06-11)

and the future *will* be distribute evenly (see my
manifesto). However one might feel about Richard Stallman 

Richard Stallman
   
       <person> Richard M. Stallman.  Founder of the GNU project.
       He resigned from the AI lab at MIT so he would be free to
       produce free software which he could then distribute on his
       own terms.  He went on to establish the Free Software
       Foundation to support the production of free software and
       ensure its free distribution.
   
       E-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
   
       (1994-10-28)

and his
ideology, the FSF, the GPL, and the like are the only things standing
between *our* vision of the internet as an extension of the human
nervous system for communication and exchange, and another Big Media
Enterprise.
Rest assured, I believe Information Will Be Free.

 

OK , so I've got some reading to do.

But how should we be going about getting GPL incorporated into at least 
European Law.

John

--
John Richard Smith
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 



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